


the fable of the fox, the wolf, and the wizard copper

by bluflamingo



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Foxes, Future Fic, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27981597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: Abigail's all grown up and working for the Folly, but London's foxes still talk to her. Especially when they need her help.
Relationships: Peter Grant & Abigail Kamara
Comments: 17
Kudos: 69
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	the fable of the fox, the wolf, and the wizard copper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sageness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/gifts).



> Sageness asked for case fic with Peter learning to respect Abigail as a colleague. I always loved that Abigail talked to the foxes, and the fic kind of grew from there! The book she talks about is Henrysoun's Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, specifically The Fox, the Wolf and the Cadger. 
> 
> I haven't read the most recent books, so this is a future fic/possible AU where Peter ends up back in the Folly.

Peter had, ever since Abigail started looking at universities when she was seventeen, argued that she should really move into the Folly. He always claimed it was because Abigail was more like the wizards of old, who started learning magic, like she had, as teenagers; or that Nightingale, now that Peter lived full time with Beverley and the twins, was lonely and needed company other than Molly and Foxglove.

Abigail solved that problem for three years by going to university in Edinburgh, and then by moving into a flatshare with a cousin of Guleed's while Peter was distracted by having a brand new baby son, who was cute, but cried a lot. Really, a lot. Even the twins complained about it, when Abigail took them to the Folly to visit with Molly, whom they loved. 

She'd been living with Hibaq for two years, officially one of a cohort of four new Falcon officers (none of whom lived at the Folly) for just as long, but Peter still hadn't let it go. 

"You wouldn't have to worry about getting rained on," he tried, walking into the Folly one morning as she was on her way out, waterproof over her arm in deference to the cold, grey clouds, as well as the BBC weather forecast.

Abigail didn't even bother dignifying that with a response – she was heading out for what he called community intelligence gathering, the rest of her cohort called the weekly skulk, and she called checking in with the London foxes. Living in the Folly wouldn't keep her any drier. And even if she'd been going home, both the Folly and Abigail's apartment block had covered parking and Abigail had her own car, something that Peter tended to forget about, the same way he tended to forget she was twenty-five, with a degree in Classics and Latin, a warrant card, and a letter of commendation from Nightingale for her magic learning. 

"Molly's looking for you," she lied cheerfully, slipping past Peter while he made noises about what on Earth he could have done to upset her this time. 

Abigail's fellow officers mostly called it the skulk because Bethan had said that was what you called a group of foxes and they liked the pun, but Abigail had to admit that there was a fair amount of skulking around involved in checking in with the foxes. After all this time, she knew where to find all of them, and they knew where to be to find her when they had information or, less frequently, needed help.

She didn't see everyone every week, but she kept a mental track of who she hadn't seen for a while, made sure to look out for them and ask around when someone was missing for a couple of weeks. Despite that, she wasn't really worried until she stopped by the Royal Observatory just after eleven o'clock and found Hilda waiting for her. 

Hilda was a young fox who'd moved into the area with her mate, Lawrence, some time during Abigail's final year at university. Unlike most of the London foxes, Hilda and Lawrence still hadn't had any cubs – Abigail wasn't sure if they didn't want to (or if foxes even thought like that about having babies) or couldn't, and didn't like to ask. Probably because of that, they roamed a lot more than some of the foxes she knew, and she hadn't seen them for a few weeks.

She'd never seen Hilda without Lawrence.

"All right, Abigail?" Hilda skulked up to her when Abigail sat on a bench in the far corner from the Observatory, the pair of them rendered basically invisible by the poor weather. Abigail offered her a bite of sausage roll, then the whole thing when Hilda snapped it up. 

"Where's Lawrence?" It wasn't unheard of for even Abigail's foxes to be killed, but Abigail had learned to read fox body language over the years – Hilda was anxious, but not upset the way the foxes got when their mates died. 

Hilda went down on her stomach for a moment, then sat on her haunches, looking exactly like a dog begging for food. "Gone," she said, drawing the vowel out in a miserable, but quiet, cry.

Abigail took another sausage roll out of her bag. "Tell me everything," she said.

*

"Lawrence," she said to Peter again, impatiently, an hour after she'd promised to come back at _mouse time_ and update Hilda, then driven back to the Folly to find everyone out except Peter. Even Nightingale was gone, meeting, according to Peter, with Stephanopoulos, and Molly and Foxglove had gone to prepare to do whatever it was they did on full moons. "He lives near the Observatory, with Hilda? They helped out with the missing kids last year?"

Peter just looked at her, the way he did when he didn't remember what she was talking about but didn't want to admit it – he tended, these days, to remember the outcomes rather than the details of cases. "What's happened?"

Abigail started walking towards the library again, Peter following. "They met a wolf," she said, "Who tricked Lawrence into working for him and won't let him go. He managed to get a message to Hilda, said he's got a plan to get free but he needs our help."

"How did they meet a wolf in London?" Peter asked, as though that was the relevant part of the whole thing. "They've been extinct in England for four hundred years."

"He's a Scottish wolf."

"Ah," Peter said, pausing just inside the library doors as Abigail made for where she thought she'd find the book she wanted. "He's more of a wolf in the way that Fossman's a fox than in the way that Hilda and Lawrence are foxes?"

Abigail shuddered a little at Fossman's name – the way he'd cornered her at the Spring Court seemed worse the older she got, and the more she realised how inappropriate it had been for him to behave that way with a teenage girl – but nodded. "I read about him."

It took her a second to find the book she was looking for – Bethan still didn't really understand the Dewey Decimal System – but she flipped it open to the right fable immediately. "Look." She offered it to Peter, who took one look at the Latin and the layout that made it obviously a poem and shook his head – his Latin had never been as good as hers, and she had to admit that the Latin of a fifteenth century Scottish poet probably wasn't the easiest to dive into cold. 

"It's the story of a fox – Lowrence – who's tricked into working for the wolf. It's Lawrence's story." 

Peter frowned down at the page, like it would start being something he could easily read. "He's acting out the story?"

"I think it's like the ghosts," Abigail told him. "The same story playing out over and over. It might just be a coincidence that Lawrence's name is so similar to the story."

"It's a fable," Peter said, looking at the cover, helpfully translated into English: _The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phygian_. He didn't sound like he was arguing exactly; more like he wanted Abigail to convince him. 

"The book's in the Folly's library," Abigail explained dutifully. Like a lot of the books there, no-one seemed to know why it was there, what it had to do with magic. Like more than one of those same books, they'd probably just found an answer to that question. "And the wolf's name is Cupid."

They all knew that the stories of Greek and Roman gods didn't always match up to the modern world of magic, but Cupid was clearly not what Peter had expected Abigail to say. "Cupidity's another word for greed." She flipped through to the story of the lion and the mouse and found the relevant line. "In the fables, the wolf represents avarice – greed. Cupidity…"

"Cupid," Peter said quietly. He looked down at the book for a minute, then back to Abigail. Despite her concern for Lawrence, the pride in his face made her smile, like a warm glow in the part of her that always felt like the kid she'd been when she first came to the Folly. "What's your plan then, PC Kamara?"

*

Modern London didn't exactly abound with peddlers selling fish, or even with that much in the way of travelling fish salesmen.

What it did have was the Greenwich Market, complete with food trucks. Including one that specialised in herring-based food, specifically rollmops.

"That actually sounds worse than just calling them rolled herrings," Peter said, reading the menu on his phone as they cut through the early lunch crowd. Hilda hadn't known what time Lawrence was planning his plan, only that it would be today.

Abigail made a face. "They sound disgusting whatever you call them," she said, digging out her warrant card and putting on her best combined Dana-Sculley-Joan-Watson-Kate-Beckett-don't-mess-with-me copper face. "Excuse me, sir, Metropolitan Police, we're going to need to commandeer your truck."

Like every time, the face worked, and she and Peter were tucked into the truck, the proprietor sent off to get a coffee at the Met's expense, within five minutes. 

"I don't suppose you know how to make rollmops," Peter said. Considering Abigail was fairly sure this was the first time in her life she'd seen him wearing an apron, she assumed that meant he didn't know. She wasn't sure what he and Beverley actually ate – every time they had her over for dinner, they either went out or ordered take-away – but she was sure that neither one of them really cooked, and maybe didn't really know how. For all she knew, Molly sent care packages – she certainly loved Peter's kids enough to make sure their parents didn't starve.

She adjusted the cap the proprietor had insisted she had to wear for hygiene reasons, and passed her phone to Peter. "But I'm sure you know how to google it," she told him, turning her best customer service smile on the two women in wool coats and sensible heels standing at the counter. "What can I get you, ladies?"

Unlike some of the other trucks, The Red Herring never got really busy – unsurprising, as Abigail couldn't imagine that even the workers of Greenwich would be hugely enthused about herring. She kept an eye on the crowd, an eye on the customers, and the third eye that she really could have used on Hilda, skulking around the edge of the market and only occasionally stealing something from one of the other stalls. Abigail wasn't entirely sure how she'd recognise Cupid Waitskaith – a grey-haired white guy in a suit wouldn't exactly stand out in this crowd – but it turned out not to matter.

A little after half past two, the crowd mostly dissipated and Peter already packing up in the back of the truck, Hilda, who'd tucked herself into the overhang of the truck when the rain started again, made a sharp yipping noise. "You see him?" Abigail asked, leaning over the counter to look at her.

Hilda was pressed down onto her belly, noise pointing to the far side of the market as she growled, low enough that Abigail could only just hear her. There was, when Abigail followed Hilda's gaze, only one person who could possibly be Waitskaith. He was dressed entirely in grey – suit, shirt, even tie – and had the kind of rangy build that, now she'd seen him, Abigail could clearly identify as belonging to a wolf. Most of his face was hidden under a full beard and overgrown hair, the exact same shade as his clothes, but his eyes, as he got closer, were a startlingly bright blue.

There was no sign of Lawrence.

"He's here," Abigail told Peter, not turning to look at him. "Hilda, go." From the faint scratch of claws, Hilda hadn't needed telling twice. 

Abigail put on her customer service smile again, pretending really hard that she was back in the Edinburgh fudge shop she’d worked at all through university. "What can I get you, sir?" Waitskaith didn't say anything, just looked at her. She really hoped she'd guessed right. "We're coming to the end of lunch service, but I'm sure we have something in the back."

Waitskaith didn't blink. Abigail was really glad she was a copper and not a rabbit. "I'm looking," he said, voice echoing with a growl that she felt down the back of her neck, "For a herring. A golden herring."

"We've got red herrings," Abigail said, balancing between knowing and playing dumb. "I don't know about gold."

"Not gold," Waitskaith said. There was a tone, Abigail had learned after six years as an apprentice wizard and another four as a magic copper, that people adopted when they were about to give you a code word they thought you might have missed. Waitskaith had it in spades. "A golden herring. **The** golden herring. Grown in a lab, in Colombia."

Abigail frowned, doing her very best 'I'm just a girl who doesn't understand the boys.' "Herring aren't native to Colombia."

Waitskaith growled for real. "I was told that you were the place to come. That you'd know what I was looking for."

"What are you looking for?" It was too easy – she could almost see the words as they gathered on the back of his tongue. Lawrence, just like in the fable, had tricked him well, planted an idea so strong that Waitskaith couldn't let it go, no matter how much he had to act against his own character to get it.

"Cocaine, girl, what else, I'm looking for cocaine."

Abigail smiled, reached into her pocket. "Of course, sir," she said, and flashed her warrant card right in his face. "Cupid Waitskaith –"

He whirled, already running, slammed straight into Peter, who'd snuck around the side of the truck, bounced off him, and crashed to the ground. Abigail, who'd vaulted the counter the moment he turned, had him rolled onto his front, hands clasped behind his back, before Peter even had his handcuffs out.

"- You're under arrest for attempting to purchase illegal substances." 

There hadn't been time to research how to break the trick that bound Lawrence – the poem suggested a blow to the neck, which they couldn't really do as police officers. It turned out not to matter – Abigail felt the snap like a physical thing as she locked Peter's cuffs into place around Waitskaith's wrists. 

*

Later, Waitskaith dealt with, Lawrence and Hilda safely reunited, and the two of them drinking coffee at the Folly as they wrote up their reports, Peter said, "Nice job, with all that."

Abigail shrugged modestly. "You said the GCSE in Latin would be useful if I wanted to join the Folly."

Peter grinned. "That wasn't quite what I had in mind," he said, instead of trying to take the credit like a lot of the men she knew. "You know," he added, looking way too pleased with himself, "You could take that as a sign that all my advice is good, and move into the Folly."

"No," Abigail said firmly, hiding her own smile behind her coffee. "But thanks for thinking about me."


End file.
